Talking About Cannabis Today: A Matter of Knowledge
It doesn’t really matter if you are smoker or a hater, or even someone who doesn’t really care about it: when it comes to cannabis it’s pretty hard not to admit that what you are talking about is something controversial, powerful and political. When I say “political”, however, I don’t mean that cannabis is an issue that should be discussed by politicians. On the contrary, political to me is something that has to do with power and knowledge production. If you think about it in these terms, very few things are more political than cannabis, because very few other things have been rhetorically produced and reproduce by powerful institutions that sell powerful discourses to the masses.
Of course, if you are a pot lover, you can just lay back and enjoy some cannabis (by the way, if you want the best on the market, try this website http://greenhouseseeds.nl/) without thinking about all the issues related to this beautiful plant. However, doing so would mean ignoring an ocean of extremely interesting discourses and, at the same time, lose you in the image of the “pot smoker”, another product of powerful knowledge production machines. Whenever you light up a joint, try to think about the meaning of what you are doing. Think about the reasons why marijuana has become “illegal”, the corporate politics and the powerful men who still stand behind this label, and consider how many things around you have been shaped by the same kind of power. If you are serious about your commitment to hemp, you will soon realize cannabis is not only – and probably not necessarily – a symbol of rebellion. It is a constant reminder that the world is made of labels and words, dialectical tools that were created by people who were driven by their own interest and not by a sublime level of intelligence or wisdom.
Whether you like it or not, you should really push yourself beyond the image of the pot smoker and realize the many subtle things marijuana, as a symbol of repression and knowledge production, can actually teach you. It can truly show you the way to a greater level of awareness, and you don’t even have to smoke it to see it. Just think about the incredible journey that pushed cannabis towards the shadows of illegality, think about the number of cultures that have been using hemp for centuries (including Europeans and Americans), and the ask yourself: how many other things have been labeled in a certain way, just because powerful actors have decided that way?
